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My information regarding the reefs of this area, is derived from various sources, and from an examination of numerous charts; especially of those lately executed during the survey under Captain Owen, R.N. I lay under particular obligation to Captain Bird Allen, R.N., one of the members of the late survey, for many personal communications on this subject.
He remembered the reefs, but he did not know of the needle of rock. Presently he saw Gaspard's boat coming. "Someone who knows the bay," he said; "I see a hut on the cliff." "Hello, who are you?" Brigond called down as Gaspard drew alongside. "A Hudson's Bay Company's man," answered Gaspard. "How many are there of you?" "Myself alone." "Can you pilot us in?" "I know the way." "Come up."
Besides," he added, in a milder tone, "the cruiser is quietly at anchor on the other side of the island, and there's not a captain in the British navy who could take a pinnace, much less a ship, through the reefs at the north end of the island without a pilot." "Well," returned Scraggs, carelessly, "do as you please. It's all one to me."
The Dipsey did not go at full speed; there was no hurry, and as he was in absolutely unknown waters, Captain Hubbell wished to take no risks of sunken reefs or barely submerged islands. Soundings were frequent, and they found that the polar sea at least that part over which they were sailingwas a comparatively shallow body of water.
The result of those investigations was, a large accession to our previous knowledge of the sea to the eastward of Australia, now become important from our settlements; and a survey of five hundred miles of the great chain of coral reefs which act as the breakwater against the ocean.
In the numberless fiords that extend from Christiansand to Cape North, among the dangerous reefs of Finland, and in the channels of the Loffoden Islands, opportunities to familiarize themselves with the perils of ocean are not wanting; and from time immemorial they have given abundant proofs of their courage.
At the southern entrance of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, a line of sunken rocks, known by the generic name of the Actaeon reef, attests that Bruny Head was once joined with the shores of Recherche Bay; while, from the South Cape to the jaws of Macquarie Harbour, the white water caused by sunken reefs, or the jagged peaks of single rocks abruptly rising in mid sea, warn the mariner off shore.
This rock may be made by the consolidation of volcanic cinders, of angular waste at the foot of cliffs, or of fragments of coral torn by the waves from coral reefs, as well as of strata crushed by crustal movements. FAULT SCARPS. A fault of recent date may be marked at surface by a scarp, because the face of the upthrown block has not yet been worn to the level of the downthrow side.
Among the first plants that raise their heads to the sea-breeze is the graceful cocoa-nut palm. This tree is exceedingly hardy, and is found growing on reefs which are so low that at a distance the trees seem to be standing on the surface of the water. Indeed many of them spring out of the pure white sand, and their roots are washed perpetually by the salt spray.
He managed to get a reef in one of the inner jibs and two reefs in the spanker, and then, with the aid of the watch-tackle, to hoist them to the stiff breeze that yet blew. And all through the night, tacking back and forth on the back track, he shook out canvas as fast as the wind would permit.
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